On Thu, Apr 2, 2009 at 10:06 AM, Xavier Leroy <Xavier.Leroy@inria.fr> wrote:
> It could be nice to translate it in English, at least to have a
>>> larger base of readers, and adapt the examples from Caml Light to
>>> Objective Caml (I don't know how much the syntaxes differ though)
>>>
>>
>> The syntax is very close for the subset of Caml used in the book.
>>
>
> Right. Parts of the standard library changed, though.
>
> However, judging from the lack of availability of this book even in
>> French, there might an issue in the agreement between the authors
>> (Leroy & Weis) and the publisher. I'm suspecting the authors are
>> unable to re-publish the book elsewhere.
>>
>
> The publisher (Dunod) holds all rights except for an English
> translation (Pierre Weis and I reserved those rights). There is a
> procedure to ask the publisher to relinquish its rights if it decides
> not to print the book again, but that procedure can take up to 1 year (!).
>
> All in all, I'm not sure it's worth the effort to resurrect this old
> text, but if a group of motivated volunteers arise, let's discuss it
> privately.
>
> - Xavier Leroy
>
I think it would be a better effort to start a new work, even if harder.
OCaml's has known some evolutions, there are many key projects (Extlib,
Core, Batteries, ...) so it would be nice to throw most of today's OCaml in
an entirely new book. Moreover, there wouldn't be any problem with the
publisher of LLC.
But for such a project there would be the need for a great team of very
motivated people.